Congratulations on your successful 'experiment'.

Quote from: Steph Eigen on September 18, 2016, 02:50:52 PMI don't have a complete grasp on how transition would play out for me, work, family, and friends so am reluctant to commit until this path is clearer.

I doubt if many of us do.  I know I don't have a clear picture of the path ahead of me.  I am just taking it one step at a time.  "What do I need to do today to keep the dysphoria at bay?" 

Although I tell people that I am aiming for a full surgical transition, that is really pie in the sky.  I know that I will make that decision some time in the future, and I don't know which way it will go.  And that's okay, because it is not on todays action list.

Right now, I am dressing at home, with my wife's blessing, and seeing a therapist with the goal of getting started on HRT.  The dressing helps a lot, but I can already tell it won't be enough in the long term, hence the therapy sessions.  Going full time?  Scary stuff!  I'll decide that once I see how I feel on hormones.  The surgery?  Manana.

So I am not committed to a path.  I am committed to becoming myself, whoever that is.  I have an idea of what direction I am headed, but that is all.  That way, I break my transition down from a huge, hairy, overwhelming deal to smaller, manageable steps.

Thanks, KathyLauren.  I'm trying to do just that, solve small problems, take small steps in my quest for the larger goal.

Transition poses big challenges to all.  Here are some of the things I've been considering:

I guess I am fortunate in a lot of ways.  I am nearly hairless other than my head.  I could not grow a respectable beard it my life depended on it.  If I do not shave my face for about a week, I have messy looking scruff but a laughable mess when compared to a real beard.  My underarms are actually hairless.  I have very fine hair on my legs and arms.  A few (meaning actually countable) hairs on my chest.  Right now I count about 4.  Pubic hair but limited to, well, my pubic area not abdomen and thighs. Score a big plus. 

I am well over 6 feet tall and have large upper body and shoulders.  In women's sizes, I'm about a 1-2X or an 18W-20 in tops, dresses, etc.  On the bottom, not much in the way of hips, a bit wide in the waist slightly overweight but not obese.  A size 16 in pants, jeans, skirts, etc.  I could really use some more bulk in the hips and ass, less in the midsection.  Score a big minus for the upper body size.  Score a minus for small ass, unknown how this would respond to HRT. 

I've had some breast tissue, just short of frank gynecomastia since male puberty. Score a plus.

I facially, I'm not especially cute, getting old, have a big nose, prominent brow ridge.  I do have plenty of hair but it is very fine in texture.  Plus/minus on this one.

I'm not at all vain but I don't think I'm going to make a vaguely passable woman at age ~60 with my basic body habitus and facial appearance.  I suppose I need to be a bit more circumspect and consider that I have not considered the effects of HRT and the surgical options. with FFS and HRT-- unknown.   I'm not feeling really good about having a lot of surgery.

Another consideration is that I do not have the option to become a self indulgent teenage girl for a period of a year or two while having a second round of puberty.  Imagine going to an international research meeting loaded with colleagues and competitors to present a paper in the throws of early transition, appearing as a "dude in a dress" having emotional instability on HRT and breaking into tears  at the the session.  This is the sort of nightmarish stuff that goes through my mind.

Anyway, I'm not trying to look at all the downsides without considering the benefits.  It is just part of the due diligence process for undertaking a major life change.

Steph

Quote from: Steph Eigen on September 18, 2016, 05:23:28 PM
Imagine going to an international research meeting loaded with colleagues and competitors to present a paper in the throws of early transition, appearing as a "dude in a dress" having emotional instability on HRT and breaking into tears  at the the session.

Actually, one of my role models was the trans astrophysicist who presented a paper at a national astronomy convention.  I have no idea where she was in her transition.  She looked good but would not have been able to go "stealth".  No evidence of emotional instability, just an awesomely good lecture. 

What was especially remarkable was that no one on the audience afterwards was talking about her.  They were all in a buzz about the subject of the talk.  Seeing and hearing that was what got me over my first hurdle to start investigating trans issues online.

KathyLauren,

That's certainly encouraging--testament to the power of a good lecture and the character of the lecturer! 

There are other exceptional role models such as Lynn Conway.  She prevailed on the basis of exceptional talent despite several major career setbacks arguably the consequence of her transition.  The IEEE and others have bestowed various honors and awards upon her for her work over an incredibly productive career. 

I look to these exceptional individuals for reassurance that it is possible to overcome this problem and remain productive.

To my point and yours, I just cannot appear as an awkward "dude in a dress" and have to get my emotional state under control before a presentation at the plenary session of the meeting.  I think I will have no problem keeping the pink and purple unicorns out of the Powerpoint template.

Thanks so much for the reality check.  I needed to bring my anxieties back down to a reasonable level of control, back from some remote supernova remnant to earth!



Steph

Tomorrow afternoon holds another round of therapy in store for me.  The last two tumultuous sessions were largely cathartic, getting a lot out on the table for subsequent discussion.  They were helpful to me as I've never opened up to another human being about any this before.  It was exhausting but constructive, building the foundation for things to come.  Tomorrow is going to be the beginning of the hard work of analyzing last week's "data."   I have to admit, this scares me quite a bit and I do not scare easily.  This is the first time I've really confronted all this, in excess of 50 years worth of life events and emotions in a prospective rigorous way.  I don't think I have ever felt so completely vulnerable.

Toward the end of last week in an effort to diffuse some anxiety and dysphoria, guess what I did?  Shop on line, of course!  I bought a bunch of Steph clothes I don't really need.  It's kind of sad yet darkly comical--many would argue stereotypical female behavior.  I suppose to complete the image I should have binged on some chocolate as well.   I'm starting to feel the rapidly advancing wave of dysphoria strike but the arrival today of some very nice undies and a couple cute tops didn't do much to blunt the symptoms.  By tomorrow afternoon the dysphoria will be much more intense--I can feel it coming.  I'm thinking this may be a positive outcome of the weekend's experiment, bringing a sobering sense of reality and purpose to the Tuesday therapy session.

Alright Steph, don't be so quick to discount the chocolate. I found it a wonder cure for all things trans. Well, maybe not all.
I am glad to see you two chatting. Your situation with SO's struck me as maybe similar, maybe? Oh don't mind me Ill just go back to eating my chocolate candy bar.
Moni
Munch munch!

Quote from: Steph Eigen on September 19, 2016, 08:25:47 PMI suppose to complete the image I should have binged on some chocolate as well.

Hell, yeah!  Chocolate is one of the four food groups, isn't it?     When I came out to a friend, she said, "Now, you'll start bingeing on chocolate."  "Too late," I told her, "I've been a chocoholic for years. ...  Hmm.  That should have been a sign!"

I hope your therapy session goes well.  The increase in dysphoria is a rich source of material for the therapy sessions.  You will do great!

My wife is gone for the entire weekend again as of midday today.  I debated the idea of having another Steph weekend experiment with myself, having wished we had gotten to this topic at my last therapy session.  I had some reluctance to do so since the last weekend Steph experiment was followed by a reactionary wave of substantial dysphoria the following midweek.  In a sense I see it as a self imposed tease.

I was reading a piece on the Lynn Conway website quoting Renee Richards and several other prominent individuals who transitioned later in life with longstanding careers and in some cases were widely known for their work.  They tended to strongly advise against transition, reserving it as a last option if all else fails to provide an acceptable level of control of dysphoria and workable life.  Given, they went through this process  in an earlier era so their experience is, to be fair, not directly extensible to what one would experience now.  Still they all make a very cogent argument that the process is hard, with risk of loss of loved ones, friends, colleagues, career.  This is the stuff that tortures me over the issue of coming out and pursuing transition.

I won't dwell on this point but but these personal histories and warnings hit me pretty hard.  I am willing to take risks but usually after careful consideration of the risk/benefit calculus.  In general, I tend to be pretty risk-averse.

So,the reason for the post...

I did something tonight that was out of usual character for me.  Having decided to go through with another Steph weekend experiment, I came home changed in to Steph clothes at about 4:00 today.  After finishing up some work left from earlier in the day, I remembered I needed to go to the local CVS to pick up a new pair of reading glasses and some other odds and ends, something I had intended but forgotten to do on my way home from work.

As I stood in my kitchen in a pair of black leggings, as fairly plain top and the usual underthings on I contemplated the situation.  My first urge was to defer the trip, hitting the CVS on the way to work or on the way home tomorrow night.  Instead, for some reason, I calmly concluded I would go as Steph tonight.  About 7:30 it was raining pretty hard so I put on my guy-mode Columbia raincoat and zipped it up. It's fairly loose fitting and did not belie the presence of modest boobs and black leggings are pretty generic.  Ostensibly, I could have been stopping on my way from the gym.

Why did I do this? Several reasons, I suppose.  First, I did not want to change my clothes back into guy-mode.  Second, for some unknown reason I cannot understand I had enough nerve, simultaneously realizing that there would be mostly myopic >80 year olds at the particular CVS I frequent at this hour.  Third, I really did not look even particularly androgenous let alone feminine.  Unless someone forced me to take off my raincoat, there was really nothing to draw attention.  If I had taken off the coat, it would have been a different story--boobs and a clearly feminine Laura Ashley top.  Given no one had any reason to strip the coat off me, I suppose I judged the threat to be low, even if I ran into someone I knew, so why not do it?

How did it feel?  Not like much of anything.  Not a thrill, not titillating, no sense of naughtiness, no sense of accomplishment.  Not much of anything.  It was just a mundane trip to the CVS.  The clerk was more interested in trying to get me to sign up for a CVS card than observant of the extra bulk under my coat which did subtly suggest boobs.

So, again, why did I do this?  I've been sitting here thinking about it.  This is very much counter to my usual risk-averse judgement.  I think I did it to test my own response.  I was not really certain how I would react.  It was not an attempt to make step towards coming out, rather more of a test to see how I would feel out in public at the CVS walking around in a bra, panties and visibly dressed as a woman even if relatively stealthy.

I have to admit, I'm not sure how to interpret my internal response to this event.  I guess I expected it to leave me more excited after the fact, as if I had really achieved something or made an important step.  I'm trying to understand if the business-as-usual unemotional response I feel is confirmatory of my TG nature, confirming the normality and unremarkable nature of going out in Steph mode.  On the other hand, is the lack of a response indicative of just the opposite?  I just don't know.  It left me quite confused.

I have been post op for many years, so do you know what I feel like when I put my feminine clothes on in the morning? I feel nothing, no excitement, no depression, no wrongness. That is now everybody else feels and that's how we should feel and I think that could be what you were feeling in the store. We seek the transition to escape the sense of wrong in our life and noting else.

You should be careful when reading other people experiences because they are not you they may not feel the same urge to transition and the conditions of their life may not be the same. We have people on the site who resist transitioning because they value their life enough that they will endure the dysphoria. Others can transition and wish to be free of dysphoria. It's not something you really can do a logical risk/benefit calculation on as you have to go totally on what you feel. I spent years attempting to apply logic to this and in the end, I measured the feel of the pain I had before starting the transition against my time in RLE and the answer was clear. No going back.

Quote from: Steph Eigen on September 30, 2016, 12:05:30 AM
My wife is gone for the entire weekend again as of midday today.  I debated the idea of having another Steph weekend experiment with myself, having wished we had gotten to this topic at my last therapy session.  I had some reluctance to do so since the last weekend Steph experiment was followed by a reactionary wave of substantial dysphoria the following midweek.  In a sense I see it as a self imposed tease.

I was reading a piece on the Lynn Conway website quoting Renee Richards and several other prominent individuals who transitioned later in life with longstanding careers and in some cases were widely known for their work.  They tended to strongly advise against transition, reserving it as a last option if all else fails to provide an acceptable level of control of dysphoria and workable life.  Given, they went through this process  in an earlier era so their experience is, to be fair, not directly extensible to what one would experience now.  Still they all make a very cogent argument that the process is hard, with risk of loss of loved ones, friends, colleagues, career.  This is the stuff that tortures me over the issue of coming out and pursuing transition.

...

I have to admit, I'm not sure how to interpret my internal response to this event.  I guess I expected it to leave me more excited after the fact, as if I had really achieved something or made an important step.  I'm trying to understand if the business-as-usual unemotional response I feel is confirmatory of my TG nature, confirming the normality and unremarkable nature of going out in Steph mode.  On the other hand, is the lack of a response indicative of just the opposite?  I just don't know.  It left me quite confused.

Hi Steph,

I would like to share some thoughts. I fully transitioned around the same time as Richards did. Both she and Conway are around 80 years old and transitioned when they were ten to 15 years older than me, meaning I was in my mid to late 20s during the throes of transition and that colors my view. I am not chums with Conway although we've had dinner together, so I have some personal insight here, take it for what you will.

Willingly or unwillingly both Conway and Richards are public figures who were sensationalized in the news after they transitioned. Those sorts of outings were fair game 40 years ago. Today transitioning is less sensational, although far too much discrimination lingers on. The press and the court of public opinion unraveled their private lives and did a lot of trashing of them personally. Any semblance of an orderly transition was ripped apart.

They might say transition is a last resort. Coming out of that milieu, I find myself agreeing. I agree that transition is always a last resort because nothing can turn a life upside down any faster. If I could have taken a pill to make it go away and not be trans, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. Life would have been so much simpler. Less complicated. For those of us who had SRS 40 to 50 years ago, over time we forget the level of dysphoria and pain.

I remember back in college the first time I went out in public. I was with a cis female friend and she helped me get ready and I was so very scared. She insisted we take a leisurely stroll into Greek Row on a hopping weekend night when parties were in full swing and the streets were filled with students. Some guys tried to hit on us, but I watched in rapt fascination as my friend brushed them aside without saying much if anything. Girls have to go through this!? No way! Nope. Nothing exactly fun about it or titillating. This was the real deal.

Full disclosure. I was taking gray-market estrogen, but I did not have the courage to speak. My voice was my Achilles heel. It would be quite a bit later when I went en fem and interviewed for a job in homophobic corporate America. This metamorphosis did not happen overnight nor was it easy. But I felt compelled to do it.

I still have a letter I wrote to myself during the flight to Denver and then the bus ride to Trinidad, Colorado. To sum up it said, "You are out of options." I had to drink from the bitter cup.

Some years later it was great to see other people being sent off by friends and even having a party thrown for them before going off the get SRS--the euphoric look in their eyes.

For me it was an ordeal. "God, why have You done this to me!" Why has my life been wrecked so completely? My family hates me and thinks I am bonkers. My so-called friends have shunned me quite literally. I have had to move clear across the country to stop the roomers from a leaky ship of gossip mongers who believed my story was far too delicious a secret to not share it because some of the fame would rub off on them. I didn't want that ignominious fame, so they picked it up for themselves as the town criers. Plus, even though one of the owners of the company where I worked was "cool" with my transitioned, he did not think talk to his business partners ("They'll be fine with it," liberal-minded him said) but I was nevertheless fired three days into on-the-job transition for reasons having nothing to do with performance.

And after a while it all died down. I moved on--like immigrating to a new (sometime highly xenophobic) country with a different culture that I had to learn on the sly. Like, I mean, I had to learn how to dress myself, for pity sakes. How to date. How to have sex. How to be a wife. How to make it on 59-cents when I used to make a dollar for the same work.

Right, a last resort, but sometimes it's the only resort, and you know what? For all that? Now that it's 40 years behind me? I have never been so happy in all my life.

Steph, I would guess that you felt perfectly normal because what you were doing was something perfectly normal.  You felt like a normal woman going out to the store.

That you didn't feel naughty or titillated tells you that you are not dressing up to be naughty or for titillation.  That is useful information to share with your therapist.

It sounds to me like it is all good.

Thanks for the replies and advice.   

I hope I was clear that I had perspective on the fact that reading the accounts of those who had undertaken the task of transition years ago and in a fairly public way was not representative of today's experience for most.  Still, it is clear that this is no small task and not without its dangers and potential for catastrophe.  I only cited this recent reading to make the point that it reiterated the magnitude of the task and the potential for hazard, something not to be entered into without considering the situation carefully and examining all options.

Having slept on it, allowed my subconscious to work on this experience overnight, I'm still not entirely sure I have it figured out.   For me, the clothing is not my "issue,"  that is, I'm not a true cossdresser in the typical sense of term.  I gain no thrill or titillation from clothing; no more than anyone of any gender would get feeling pleased when I think I look good in something.  So, I did not expect any excitement from the act of going out dressed per se. 

I guess my lack of response led me to the conclusion that Dena made.  Get up in the morning, get dressed, go about your day--not a big event in one's life.  I think this test I conducted, proves the point to me that it is not about the clothes, again, something I had figured out long ago.   The fact that it provoked so little reaction within me I am concluding is evidence for the fact that it does not provoke a sense of internal discord with little voice inside whispering "you should not be doing this."  I guess I am inclined to judge this another check in the "TG, identifies as woman, transition" column.

On reflection, I still would have expected more of a sense that I had accomplished something, a sense of a small but still important event having occurred.  The same little voice yelling "Do you realized what just happened? You got up the nerve and went out dressed as a woman, for God's sake!"

Quote from: Dena on September 30, 2016, 01:22:19 AM
I have been post op for many years, so do you know what I feel like when I put my feminine clothes on in the morning? I feel nothing, no excitement, no depression, no wrongness. That is now everybody else feels and that's how we should feel and I think that could be what you were feeling in the store. We seek the transition to escape the sense of wrong in our life and noting else.

You should be careful when reading other people experiences because they are not you they may not feel the same urge to transition and the conditions of their life may not be the same. We have people on the site who resist transitioning because they value their life enough that they will endure the dysphoria. Others can transition and wish to be free of dysphoria. It's not something you really can do a logical risk/benefit calculation on as you have to go totally on what you feel. I spent years attempting to apply logic to this and in the end, I measured the feel of the pain I had before starting the transition against my time in RLE and the answer was clear. No going back.

It is my view that perhaps too much emphasis is placed on not being happy when looking good. In my opinion the reasons for this are complex and have as much to do with the care givers as they do with what a person actually feels.

True story: In the early 1970s a renown gender clinic was seeing some of the first patients who went on to get SRS outside of hospital-based gender programs. At one point the director came to a shocking realization--everyone's story was identical. [insert story. I won't give the symptoms.] In short, people were gaming the system. They were ready to cheat on the exam. No more SRS letters! Thank God for one therapist who spoke up. "Wait a minute. These people want this pretty badly and they seem willing to do just about anything to get SRS letters. Maybe if we stopped demanding they tell a certain story, maybe we'll get the real story." True. If the rule had been only lawyers could get SRS, I would have tried to get admitted to the bar.

The dubious theory of  ->-bleeped-<- has infected the discourse. Are there such people? I guess. Some are self-reported, so who can argue, but to make a sweeping generalization that people feel good about being women are suspect is to miss the fact that for the most part, half the population enjoys being women.  They are called ggs. They like to dress like women. Talk like women. Have sexual attraction (straight, gay, or bi) like women. They like being attractive like women. They like being gendered properly like most women. To try and pathologize it is what at bottom is the problem. "Why would a man want to be a woman?" The author of the theory, likely, cannot imagine wanting to be a woman. His misogyny, likely, is so great that anyone would have to be sick to want to do it, let alone like it, to heck with half the human race that does precisely that--more or less likes it.

The author of the  ->-bleeped-<- theory likely confuses relief and joy with finally being "right" with "wrong" sexual expression. As I wrote elsewhere, I know ggs who will get dressed up and look so hot that they will get off on it to the point where they pleasure themselves. These are not isolated incidents, either. Women tend to like to look attractive, hot, and sexy. They are classic autogynephiles. Anything that makes them not those things makes them unhappy. It's only the idea in the physician's mind that makes it bad, wrong, or sick.

Again, are there actual autogynephiles of the variety contemplated by the physicians who put forward that theory. As I said before, there seem to be some self-reported cases, but it is a huge step to then generalize the observation to explain away the world.

And of course everyone was quick to inform me, like I was someone out on the ledge of a skyscraper about to leap off, "now don't be a stereotype," likely meaning don't wear an evening gown to Whole Foods on Saturday morning. But for those who have experience with sub-teen girls, we have all seen the over-the-top makeup and bad fashion choices. "Don't be a stereotype" is actually "don't go through a female adolescence" spelled backwards. Learning how to be a sub-teen, teen, and young adult has to be compressed into a very short time. Some people simply skip it, and that's okay, at least in my book. But another aspect of that is that the same people who say "don't be a stereotype" are also saying, "Don't look to hot or I'll feel attraction  and that will make me question my sexuality." Heaven forbid! "I'll pathologize that straightaway and shield myself by using the ruse that the person is a fetishist because the person now feels at easy with themselves. At peace with themselves. How sick is that!?"

There's an old story about a guy who goes to see a psychiatrist who shows the man some inkblots. The guy says the first picture is a naked man. The second picture he says is a naked woman. The third picture is a man and woman doing it. The psychiatrist says to the guy, "I think you have sex on the brain."

"Me!? You're the one showing dirty pictures!"

Trans people are the inkblot test of the cis world. They look at us and then try to explain themselves. Usually they don't do a very good job in describing trans people, but their theories are very revealing . . . about them.

Quote from: Virginia Hall on September 30, 2016, 07:58:45 AM
And of course everyone was quick to inform me, like I was someone out on the ledge of a skyscraper about to leap off, "now don't be a stereotype," likely meaning don't wear an evening gown to Whole Foods on Saturday morning. But for those who have experience with sub-teen girls, we have all seen the over-the-top makeup and bad fashion choices. "Don't be a stereotype" is actually "don't go through a female adolescence" spelled backwards.

This this this! When you said "evening gown to Whole Foods" I thought "but I have friends who would have and did do things like that when they were young" and then  you followed with "sub teen girls" --yes! Although some of them were in their early 20s as well. Overdressing to the occasion = having a personality.

Not to validate the folks that use the ->-bleeped-<- meme to hurt other people; but here's how I react to the thought that someone might ascribe such an affliction to me. 

->-bleeped-<-?  that's horrible!   fortunately, there's an awesome, effective, and pleasant cure.   An anti-androgen.   Now, since we think this is a horrible thing that makes horrible people, I think insurance should cover a continuous supply of a suitable GnRH injection; so I'll be adding about $8,000 /yr to your insurance expense kitty.    I'll also need a little added E to protect against Osteo; unless you are looking forwards to hundreds of thousands of dollars in added expense as someone that plays as rough as I do proceeds to repeatedly break really expensive bones.

no?

Ok, shut up and get out of my way.

Frankly, do NOT care how I am categorized, as long as no one stands between me and an AA.  Because otherwise, I might get angry, on T, and well, you won't like me when I'm angry on T...   lol.

Virginia,
Thank you for taking the time to write such thoughtful remarks.

I found your comments about adolescence of particular interest.  I've given this question much consideration with regard to my own situation.  The fact that I am rapidly approaching age 60 brings me a slightly a different perspective than someone much younger.  I suspect I could transition without recapitulating many of the  teenage female adolescent fashion, style and behavioral mishaps.  I do accept the fact that there will be a steep learning curve but taken on with the clarity of mind (I hope) of an older adult with considerable life experience and better judgement than the typical adolescent. 

Better, I don't have any urge to look hot or sexy.  I am not really that worried about whether I would turn heads because of attractiveness although I'd want to look well groomed and good enough to avoid scaring little children and make my day to day interactions and travels through the world uneventful.   As I said to others and in other posts, I'd be OK with having the appearance of a rather large but otherwise unremarkable post menopausal middle aged woman.  I am way past any need to be hot in the context off any gender.  I am absolutely sure you will never find me at Home Depot in the garden section on Saturday morning wearing an evening gown and heels.  I do recognize the wisdom in your observation that you had a great deal of work to do the properly learn to dress yourself and properly learn socialization that natal women learn over years of chlldhood and adolescence adn young adulthood.  I acknowledge the magnitude of the effort that must be expended learning the roles of an adult woman as friend, lover, wife, matriarch. 

My only major personal concern about a second puberty would be having unfamiliar hormonally induced emotional instability that would interfere with my day to day function, something I addressed several post earlier in this thread. Also, aside from the usual social and family concerns, it will be extremely difficult to play out the transition process in my work environment.

As for autogynophilia, I am not in a position to debate the topic or whether the Blanchard camp is entirely right or wrong.  From my reading, I would tend to conclude the concept is faulty and should not be generalized to the description of many MtF TG individuals.  I suspect there are some that are probably well described by it.  To Becky.rw's point, the nosology is less important than finding a correct and therefore useful treatment for each individual, less important what name is given to the condition.  I found the book by Anne Vitale, The Gendered Self to be very helpful.  In particular, she describes the group of MtF individuals that characterize my experience with uncanny accuracy, her "group 3"  persons are socialized and function well as men,  suppressing  the dominant feminine until the suppressive mechanisms fail sometime typically going into middle age. I think her description is more useful and probably closer to reality of the situation for many of us that the Blanchard "late onset" concept.

Anyway, to my original point, I did learn something important about myself with this last experiment, aided substantially by this discussion.  I will have quite a bit to discuss in therapy next week.

Steph

Lol.  read that book myself; its pretty terrifying how accurate that "group 3" description is.   given the prognosis should one choose to continue denial and not treat the problem.

Really cracked me up, the phrase, "cloistered lives";  describes me to a T, I may be a "high performance" little worker/professional; but I am/was completely dependent on the people around me structuring my life and keeping me safe from social interactions.  lol.   Might as well have lived as a monk in a box..

Remember what the bard wrote in Romeo an Juliet:

Juliet:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Romeo:

I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

When taken more in the abstract, there are may parallels to the plight we face.

[Hint:  substitute "woman" for "Montague."]

Steph

Quote from: Steph Eigen on September 30, 2016, 01:02:33 PM
Remember what the bard wrote in Romeo an Juliet:

Juliet:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Romeo:

I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

When taken more in the abstract, there are may parallels to the plight we face.

[Hint:  substitute "woman" for "Montague."]

Steph

About 15 years ago on another board someone, I have forgotten who, came up with it, but there was an age adjustment formula for transitioning people. You take your age and add to it the years full-time in role and then divide by two and that gives the social adjusted age. At 60, a person just starting out is 30, so a bit more measured in dating, etc. I am 55 by that measure. Crazy as it sounds, that's about what it feels like, 55, when I think about myself emotionally and socially.

I like your math skills Virginia!!!... I am 29 now!!! Actually I always tell people I feel like I did at 30 so I think you might be on to something!!!!

Steph...I was recently exposed to Anne Vitale's work on another forum ... I am a group 3 girl too!!! ... It was great to see in black and white, all the conclusions about things I had come to myself... I highly recommend people give this a read...

http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm

Onward we go!!!!

Ashley